[Question #3365] Deep , bleeding wound and possible exposure
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92 months ago
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Dear Experts
English is not my first language, so I am sorry for any mistakes i make.
I am 30 y.o. woman and should really know better then to let such questions pop into my head, but i cannot shake off this worry. Here is what happened:
As I was preparing lunch, i opened a can of tuna and sliced my finger, but did not notice any blood or wound at first so i thought nothing of it. I do not how i missed it. I then eat tuna and took out ice cream sandwich which was in a small box ( containing 5 individual sandwiches wrapped individually in foil-like paper). I was holding the wrapper and eating the ice cream in the hand which had the wound. Only after I eat it i noticed the bleeding (a lot) , washed my hand and put a bandage on.
Now...what if the ice cream wrapper was touched by someone who also had a cut and his/her blood got blood on it ( during manufacture) . I know it is very, very far fetched but could you please entertain the idea? Ice cream was transported frozen. Would his/her blood survive on the wrapper of the ice cream sandwich (in the box, closely packaged with other 4 ice cream sandwiches? The ice cream was made about 4,5 months ago. Thanks and please forgive my stupid thoughts. I just know HIV blood survives when frozen, so I am worried thinking it is far fetched, but would it still be possible to get sick if that happened or the virus would not survive for some reason despite the temperature? Thanks again.
PS I saw someone asked about blood IN ice cream earlier, but i thought maybe mine is different + i had a very fresh, bleeding wound.
English is not my first language, so I am sorry for any mistakes i make.
I am 30 y.o. woman and should really know better then to let such questions pop into my head, but i cannot shake off this worry. Here is what happened:
As I was preparing lunch, i opened a can of tuna and sliced my finger, but did not notice any blood or wound at first so i thought nothing of it. I do not how i missed it. I then eat tuna and took out ice cream sandwich which was in a small box ( containing 5 individual sandwiches wrapped individually in foil-like paper). I was holding the wrapper and eating the ice cream in the hand which had the wound. Only after I eat it i noticed the bleeding (a lot) , washed my hand and put a bandage on.
Now...what if the ice cream wrapper was touched by someone who also had a cut and his/her blood got blood on it ( during manufacture) . I know it is very, very far fetched but could you please entertain the idea? Ice cream was transported frozen. Would his/her blood survive on the wrapper of the ice cream sandwich (in the box, closely packaged with other 4 ice cream sandwiches? The ice cream was made about 4,5 months ago. Thanks and please forgive my stupid thoughts. I just know HIV blood survives when frozen, so I am worried thinking it is far fetched, but would it still be possible to get sick if that happened or the virus would not survive for some reason despite the temperature? Thanks again.
PS I saw someone asked about blood IN ice cream earlier, but i thought maybe mine is different + i had a very fresh, bleeding wound.
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92 months ago
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PPS It looked like if blood was there, it would be tightly touching the wrapper of the other one as in the box sandwiches are stacked very closely (like slices of bread) , so no much air would be there "touching" the blood. Thank you
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H. Hunter Handsfield, MD
92 months ago
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Welcome to the forum. Thanks for your question.
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There is absolutely no risk of HIV or any other blood borne infection from this sort of event. With some analytical thought, I think you'll agree. First, if youdidn't even notice you were cut and bleeding, I doubt your wound was truly "deep", even if it was actively bleeding. Second, it seems unlikely any other person had handled the wrappings on the food you ate soon afterward; I believe most manufacturers of ice cream and similar products use automated wrapping machines, not humans. Third, even if a human had handled it, the chance he or she had HIV or other blood infection is very low (especially if you are in Scandinavia, which I'm guessing from your username) (but also true for most of Europe and North America). Finally, if there had been such contamination, there would have to be visible, wet blood.
If exposures like this ever transmitted HIV, there would be occasional infected patients without the known, standard risk factors (unsafe sex, shared drug needles, etc). But even the busiest HIV/AIDS clinics never see such persons. When someone first says they have no risk factors, it always turns out they had such risks after all: sometimes they are untruthful and other times they had risks they didn't know about, such as a sex partner they did not know was bisexual, a drug user, etc.
So no worries at all, no need for testing. But of course you are free to be tested for HIV if a negative result would help you move on without worry.
I hope this information is helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.
HHH, MD
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92 months ago
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Thank you so much, Doctor! Last related question and we can close this after your answer. In a very, very , very unlikely scenario that when a worker was handling the ice cream and his/her blood got on the wrapper (I saw on youtube they put wrapped ice cream into those small boxes manually without wearing gloves) and that contaminated wrapper touched my wound 4 months later, eventhough the ice cream was transported in freezing temperature, the virus still would not survive to be infectious, correct? The reason I got a bit paranoid is because I saw blood on the wrapper after i noticed my cut which was most likely to be mine, but I still got scared. I have a little baby I am nursing, so I am worried. I had HIV tests during and after pregnancy and it was negative. Thank you and please forgive this temporary paranoa on my part.
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H. Hunter Handsfield, MD
92 months ago
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Actually, HIV probably would survive the sequence of events you describe. But that's not thie issue. There probably have been billiions of exposure to live HIV in the environment (in food, in moist body fluids in toilets, on eating utensils, and other situation), but nobody has been infected through such contact. For example, the household members of persons with HIV never catch it, unless they also are sex or needle-sharing partners of the infected person -- despite years of sharing bathrooms, kitchens, food, etc. As I said above, if there were such instances, there would be at least some HIV infected people who don't have the standard risk factors. This is why, in the earliest days of the known HIV/AIDS epidemic, health officials were able to reassure the public about lack of risk from casual contact or the environment, even before the virus causing AIDS was discovered. In fact, HIV is rather hard to transmit. (Even the regular sex partners of infected persons often go years before they become infected themselves, and many never du. The average transmission risk for unprotected vaginal sex, if one person has HIV, is once for ever 1000-2000 exposures. Given that, what can it possibly be after the sorts of contact you're asking about?)
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I wonder if you're something of a germophobe. Are you otherwise nervous about contamination, e.g. from shaking hands, social kissing, handling, door knobs, etc? Anyway, I hope these additional comments are reassuring. Best wishes for your baby's health and successful parenthood!
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92 months ago
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"Actually, HIV probably would survive the sequence of events you describe."
This got me scared a bit, but thank you for your honesty. No, I am not a germaphob, but my immunity has been down a lot after giving birth and stress, so I started, as a consequence, thinking about those issues. Now I am almost crying thinking that if HIV survived, as you say it might had (if it was even there, of course, which I am praying it was not and there was just my blood) then as my immunity is very low I may be so unlucky. My husband died from cancer 2,5 months ago, and thinking I may deal with something like that make me very , very sad.
I found out (a bit of internet searching) that mostly women work in that factory (300 people work there in total) and official HIV rate where the factory is located among adult population is 0.01% . So it would be like 1 in a million chance, correct? And I should not stop nursing my baby and forget about it? Would you (honestly)? Thank you so much. I know you are limited by 3 responses, Doctor, so I shall not bother you again, I promise. Thank you
This got me scared a bit, but thank you for your honesty. No, I am not a germaphob, but my immunity has been down a lot after giving birth and stress, so I started, as a consequence, thinking about those issues. Now I am almost crying thinking that if HIV survived, as you say it might had (if it was even there, of course, which I am praying it was not and there was just my blood) then as my immunity is very low I may be so unlucky. My husband died from cancer 2,5 months ago, and thinking I may deal with something like that make me very , very sad.
I found out (a bit of internet searching) that mostly women work in that factory (300 people work there in total) and official HIV rate where the factory is located among adult population is 0.01% . So it would be like 1 in a million chance, correct? And I should not stop nursing my baby and forget about it? Would you (honestly)? Thank you so much. I know you are limited by 3 responses, Doctor, so I shall not bother you again, I promise. Thank you
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H. Hunter Handsfield, MD
92 months ago
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"My immunity has been down" really doesn't matter. First, all pregnancy is associated with relative immune deficiency, but that's probably recovering. And contrary to common belief, stress does not reduce immune competence. But most important, having impaired immunity rarely increases the risk of catching various infections, including HIV. Impaired immunity can make many infections worse, once they have been caught but has little or no effect at all on risk of exposure. So while colds may seem more common when people might have lower immunity, it's just that the cold symptoms are more obvious, not an increased risk of catching one.
The prevalence of HPV in the population is so variable from place to place and between population groups that overrall positive rates in an entire population are pretty meaningless. But your calculation seems fairly reasonable. So if we assume 1 chance in a million a worker in the factory had HIV, so what? You also then have to calculate the chance s/he bled into the ice cream (also one in a milliion, maybe?), and that you then contacted it in sufficient quantity that you could be infected (maybe another 1 in a million chance?). That would make your risk of HIV 0.000001 x 000001 x 0.000001 = 0.000000000000000001. That's one in too many billions to count. In other words, zero. And what if some of our estimates are way off the mark? If each step were a thousand times higher risk (1 in a thousand), the chance you caught HIV would still be only 1 in a billion!
Stop nursing your baby??? Even known HIV positive women are encouraged to nurse for 3-6 months: the health benefits of nursing are generally considered to outweigh the roughly 10-15% chance the baby would be infected.
I don't mean to sound like I'm lecturing you, and I have to wonder whether there's a component of post-partum depression here. Please discuss this with your doctor. In the meantime, I do hope these comments help you understand how irrational your fears are! And I hope the discussion has been helfpul.
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